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Oil prices hit new record highs above $61 a barrel on Thursday, driven by short-term supply fears as the first hurricane of the season threatened crude production and refinery operations in the Gulf of Mexico. But private warnings also point to a worsening long-term outlook, with Saudi officials saying that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will be unable to meet projected western demand in 10 to 15 years. Senior Saudi energy officials have privately warned US and European counterparts that Opec would have an “extremely difficult time” meeting that demand. Saudi Arabia calculates there is a 4.5m b/d gap between what the world needs and what the kingdom can provide.

Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, on Wednesday warned that the global battle for control of energy resources could become the modern equivalent of the 19th century "great game" the conflict between the UK and Tsarist Russia for supremacy in central Asia. "The great game is developing again," he told a meeting of the US-India Business Council. "The amount of energy is finite, up to now in relation to demand, and competition for access to energy can become the life and death for many societies. It would be ironic if the direction of pipelines and locations become the modern equivalent of the colonial disputes of the 19th century." The two nuclear superpowers, the US and Soviet Union, navigated the cold war because they made "the same calculations", Mr Kissinger said. "When nuclear weapons spread to 30 or 40 countries and each conducts a calculation, with less experience and different value systems, we will have a world of permanent imminent catastrophe."

Note: Here is one of the key power players, openly promoting their plan: keep people polarized and in a state of perpetual fear (you must believe the world is in a state of permanent imminent catastrophe). For an excellent summary of the plans of the power elite and what we can do about it, click here.

It's a dream that's been pursued for years: Mass-producing affordable hydrogen-powered cars that spew just clean water from their tailpipes. So Shanghai's Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies decided to start small. Really small. This month, it will begin sales of a tiny hydrogen fuel-cell car, complete with its own miniature solar-powered refueling station. The toy is a step toward introducing the technology to the public and making it commercially viable. Though prototype hydrogen cars exist, they're far from practical or affordable. Horizon's H-Racer and fueling station solve those problems on a very small scale. The price: $80 for the set. The toy's fuel cell, like those envisioned for real cars, relies on an electrochemical reaction...that powers the gadget's electric motor. The only byproducts are electricity, heat and water. The fuel is supplied by its alarm clock-sized refueling station. A small electric current, generated by the solar cells, extracts hydrogen from water. With the flip of a switch, the car takes off and runs for 4 minutes on a full tank. At Horizon's headquarters...Wankewycz and former Eastman Chemical Co. colleague George Gu demonstrated prototypes of a hydrogen-powered electric bicycle and a golf caddy they are converting from lead acid batteries to hydrogen power. "We're working on the smaller things until the infrastructure is ready," he says. On the Net: Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies: http://www.horizonfuelcell.com

Note: If governments and car companies poured millions into researching this technology, rapid progress could be made. For why this cutting-edge company is located in Shanghai and why they have only $3 million to work with, take a look at http://www.WantToKnow.info/newenergysources

Manuel Salinas, a 39-year-old inventor, claims he has built a machine that has extraordinary capabilities for finding buried objects. And now that university lab tests seem to confirm that his robot works, mining and oil corporations are flooding him with business plans. How this machine functions is still an "industrial secret," Salinas said. But ask him for proof that it works and he'll hand you a pile of press clippings on the device, called Geo-Radar or Arturito (a play on the name of Star Wars robot R2-D2). In September 2005 Salinas announced that he had found gold and buried treasure on the Juan Fern˙ndez Islands...off the coast of Chile. Recently, Salinas asked a Chilean university to study the machine and put the questions surrounding it to rest. In early May the results came in, and the Geo-Radar jumped back into local headlines. University investigators announced laboratory and field tests indicating that the Geo-Radar technology is capable of quickly finding copper deposits, petroleum, and gold bullion at depths of up to 600 feet (283 meters). "This reduces the time of exploration from three months to one day," said engineering professor Ricardo Neira Navarro at a press conference in Santiago, the national capital. "I built this machine to find buried antipersonnel mines," explained Salinas. When he finished building the machine in 2004 and ran field tests, Salinas says, the machine surprised him with its abilities to find water, petroleum, and buried metals.

A much-shrouded idea could give portable power a real charge, for a change -- and change, well, everything. Imagine the day when cellphones charge up in seconds, laptop batteries never degrade, and electric cars have the same power, driving range and purchase price as their gas-powered cousins. Such a battery -- a superbattery -- doesn't exist today, but a tiny company out of Austin, Texas, is getting remarkably close, and the possibilities have caught the attention of the U.S. army, the former vice-chairman of Dell Computer, and one of the most respected venture capital firms in North America. Among EEStor's claims is that its "electrical energy storage unit" could pack nearly 10 times the energy punch of a lead-acid battery of similar weight and, under mass production, would cost half as much. It also says its technology more than doubles the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in most portable computer and mobile gadgets today, but could be produced at one-eighth the cost. The company...is weeks away from seeking independent verification of the product's performance. Adding more intrigue to the story is the fact that Colin Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state, joined Kleiner Perkins last summer as a strategic partner.

In the quest for oil-free power, a handful of small companies are staking claims on the boundless energy of the rising and ebbing sea. The technology that would draw energy from ocean tides...is largely untested, but several newly-minted companies are reserving tracts of water from Alaska's Cook Inlet to Manhattan's East River in the belief that such sites could become profitable sources of electricity. The site that is furthest along in testing lies in New York's East River, between Manhattan and Queens, where Verdant Power plans to install two underwater turbines this month. If all goes well, New York-based Verdant could have up to 300 turbines in the river by 2008. The turbines would produce as much as 10 megawatts of power, or enough electricity for 8,000 homes. With 12,380 miles of coastline, the U.S. may seem like a wide-open frontier for the fledgling industry, but experts say interest will focus on only a few. Government and the private sector in Europe, Canada and Asia have moved faster than their U.S. counterparts to support tidal energy research. As of June 2006, there were small facilities in Russia, Nova Scotia and China, as well as a 30-year-old plant in France, according to a report by EPRI. Tidal power proponents liken the technology to little wind turbines on steroids. Water's greater density means fewer and smaller turbines are needed to produce the same amount of electricity as wind turbines. Wave energy technology is less advanced than tidal and will need more government subsidies...however, the number of good wave sites far exceeds that of tidal. But a few companies are working aggressively to usher wave power into the energy industry.

Note: To understand why the U.S. is moving slowly, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/newenergysources.

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